Albert Anker

Albert Anker around 1900

Albert Anker in his studio in 1901

Albert Samuel Anker (born April 1, 1831 in Ins , Canton Bern , Switzerland; † July 16, 1910 ibid) was a Swiss painter , graphic artist and genre painter of Swiss folk life.

Life

Albert Anker was born as the second of three children of the veterinarian Samuel Anker (1791-1860) and his wife Marianne Elisabeth Anker, née Gatschet (1802-1847), on April 1, 1831 in Ins in the Bernese Seeland . Between 1845 and 1848 he got his first private drawing lessons from Louis Wallinger in Neuchâtel . In 1847, Anker's brother Friedrich Rudolf (* 1828) and his mother died in the same year, and his sister just five years later.

From 1849, Anker attended high school in Bern. He lived with his uncle Matthias Anker (1788–1863). In a letter dated June 9th to his friend Bachelin, Anker explains in detail about painting. From May 11th to the summer of 1854 he was a member of the Swiss Zofinger Association .

In 1851, Anker passed the Matura and began to study theology in Bern. In September he traveled to Paris for the first time, where he got to know and appreciate the works of Eustache Le Sueur and Nicolas Poussin , among others . From autumn 1852 to spring 1854, Anker continued his studies at the University of Halle .

On December 25, 1853, in a letter to his father, Anker expressed his desire to finish his studies and become a painter. In the spring, Anker returned to Bern and initially continued his studies. With the chalk drawing Smoking Age he took part for the first time in an exhibition of the Swiss Art Association in Bern.

When Anker got his father's permission to drop out of college in 1854, he moved to Paris . He became a student of the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre , with whom Pierre-Auguste Renoir also studied from 1861 . Between 1855 and 1860 he attended the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and from 1859 to 1885 was regularly represented with his pictures in the Paris Salon . Between 1856 and 1862 he traveled to Brittany , the Black Forest and Italy , which was followed by several trips to Italy, Germany , France and Belgium .

When his father became seriously ill in 1859 and died at the end of 1860, Anker took over the house in Ins. At first he only spent the summer months there, the winter time in Paris. In 1890 he gave up his residence in Paris and moved entirely to Ins.

In 1866 he became a member of the “Society of Swiss Painters and Sculptors”. Anker worked as a faience painter from 1866 to 1882 . From 1870 to 1874, Anker was a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Bern, where he campaigned for the construction of the Bern Art Museum , which opened in 1873.

Albert Anker was honored many times for his works, for example he was one of the organizers of the Swiss department at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878 , was made a knight of the French Legion of Honor in the same year and was elected to the Federal Art Commission in 1888 , where he was a member until 1892 and from 1895 to 1898 was active. From 1891 to 1901 he was a member of the Federal Commission of the Gottfried Keller Foundation . On November 17, 1900, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern .

In 1901, Anker suffered a severe stroke, which paralyzed his right hand. This handicap made it difficult for Anker to work on large oil paintings. In a comfortable working position for him - sitting on a chair with the picture carrier on his knees - he painted up to 600 watercolors, whereby the preliminary drawing with pencil was reduced to a minimum. In 1906 Jakob August Heer made a bust of Anker.

Albert Anker died in Ins on July 16, 1910. In his memory, exhibitions were held in the “Musée d'art et d'histoire” in Neuchâtel from November 1st to 30th, 1910 and in the Kunstmuseum Bern from January 15th to February 12th, 1911. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his death, the Museum Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur showed the Albert Anker exhibition . Beautiful world. On the 100th anniversary of death.

Self-portrait as a Zofingen student, around 1849

Anchor in Paris in 1855

Self-Portrait 1891

Self-Portrait 1908

family

On December 6, 1864, Anker married Anna Rüfli (1835–1917) from Lengnau, a friend of his late sister Louise (1837–1852), in Twann. He had six children with Anna Rüfli: Louise (1865–1954), Sophie Marie (1872–1950), Cécile (1877–1957), Rudolf (1867–1869), Emil (1870–1871) and Moritz (1874–1931) . Louise married the businessman Max Oser in Basel in 1884, and Marie married the organist Albert Quinche in Neuchâtel in 1892. Cécile married the professor of dermatology Charles Du Bois in 1901 .

Anker painted his children and grandchildren repeatedly, his wife occasionally appears on sketches. In the picture “ Die Länderkinder ”, Anker captured her: She is the woman with the white hood in front of the rear car. The boy in the light-colored smock to whom the dark-clad lady turns is Anker's youngest son Moritz.

• 

  Albert and Luise Anker, daguerreotype around 1850

• 

  Anna Anker-Rüfli with
  son Moritz

• 

  Anker in his studio, 1907

• 

  Albert and Anna Anker, around 1905

• 

  The Anker family: Albert, daughter Marie Quinche-Anker, their daughter Charlotte Quinche, Albert's daughter Cécile and a girl from Ins, 1901

• 

  Anna Anker, two visitors, Albert Anker, Charlotte Quinche, Cécile Dubois-Anker, around 1902

• 

  Marie Anker 1880

plant

Anker painted portraits of children, scenes with religious and historical figures, still lifes and rural landscapes. He differed from his teacher Gleyre mainly in that he did not paint his figures flawlessly or stylized, but very vividly.

Depictions of children

Within 19th century European painting, Anker was one of the most important creators of children's representations. He painted around 600 works in oil, 250 of which show depictions of children, alone or in groups. In the “Knöchelspiel” of 1864, Anker painted a group game that conveys Anker's view of the game as an acquisition of skills for later life in society and the state. The function of the game is to transition from the easy child's existence to the serious adult world. Anker's interest in the game goes beyond the anthropological, cultural and educational educational game. It requires fine motor skills as well as concentration, constructive imagination and creativity. In the portrait “The girl with the dominoes” from 1900, Anker illustrates the creative power of a girl who concentrates on play in such a way that she is completely absorbed in her children's world. In Anker's representations of community games, the child experiences his or her individuality through creative action.

Anchor's children's world viewed from the point of view of educational change in Europe in the 19th century, we encounter a humanistically open-minded zeitgeist, which in terms of art is strongly related to the content of the nascent teaching of the Swiss Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) dealt with. Anker's works permeate the teaching of education and are told through the many individual depictions of schoolchildren with slate, exercise book, pens, schoolbook. It tells of a time when education for rural children was not yet a matter of course and the children were seen as small adults. It was not until 1874 that free primary school lessons were anchored in the Swiss Federal Constitution and nine years of compulsory schooling were made compulsory.

drawings

Anker demonstrated his artistic talent as a draftsman at a young age, even before he began training as a painter in Paris in 1854. As a child, Anker used every opportunity to draw, at school, on the go or at home. In 1846, during his private drawing lessons, he was awarded one of the school prizes for a colored pencil study after a skull at the Neuchâtel grammar school, which he received regularly in the following years. These recognitions of his talent gave the young anchor the assurance that he had the skills to become a painter. In 1856 and 1858, for example, Anker was honored early on in figure drawing at the “École Impériale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts” in Paris.

His spectrum of works on paper ranges from quick sketches that served as variants and drafts, as samples for clients, to detailed sheets that are considered independent works. He finally created 230 drawings and watercolors on behalf of the Neuchâtel publisher Frédéric Zahn (1857–1919) for his Gotthelf edition from 1894 to 1902 and for other popular publications.

Pencil, charcoal and pen and ink drawings, works in chalk, red chalk, pastel or sepia as well as mixed techniques in different formats are known. The number of works on paper that Anker made during his lifetime is not known, but it can be assumed that it comprises several thousand. The style of his sign language ranges from delicately breathed pen drawings to vigorously wiped black charcoal drawings and was the basis for his watercolor, faience and oil painting, which make up an essential part of his oeuvre.

Awards (selection)

• 1856: Two bronze medals at the École Impériale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts in Paris
• 1858: A silver medal at the Ecole Impériale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts in Paris
• 1866: Gold medal in the Paris Salon
• 1872: A bronze medal for his painting The Marionettes at the International Exhibition in London
• 1873: A medal for faience painting at the world exhibition in Vienna

Works (selection)

image	title	year	Size / material	Owner / collection
	Sunday afternoon	1861	82 × 65cm oil on canvas	Musée d'art et d'histoire, Neuchâtel
	The school exam	1862	103 × 175 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Bern
	Child funeral	1863	111 × 171 cm oil on canvas	Aargauer Kunsthaus
	The knuckle players	1864	Oil on canvas
	The bathers	1865	64 × 123.5 cm oil on canvas
	Girl feeding the chickens	1865	66 × 51 cm oil on canvas	Musée d'art et d'histoire, Neuchâtel
	The farmers and the newspaper	1867	64 × 80.5 cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	The exiles	1868	62 × 50 cm oil on canvas
	The drinker	1868	69 × 50 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Bern
	The Kappeler milk soup	1869	97 × 137 cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	Ruedi Anker on his deathbed	1869	103 × 175 cm oil on canvas	Collection Christoph Blocher
	Heinrich Pestalozzi and the orphans in Stans	1870	95 × 73 cm oil on canvas	Kunsthaus Zurich
	The Bourbaki Army	1871	95 × 151 cm oil on canvas	Musée d'art et d'histoire, Neuchâtel
	The school walk	1872	90 × 150 cm, oil on canvas	Collection Christoph Blocher
	The pile dweller	1873	65 × 81 cm oil on canvas	Musée de Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds
	The soap blower	1873	45 × 32 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Bern
	Tea and bread rolls	1873	33 × 3 48 cm oil on canvas	Solothurn Art Museum
	The parish clerk	1874	64.5 × 51 cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	The artist's daughter Louise	1874	64.5 × 51 cm oil on canvas	Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur
	Young mother looking at her sleeping child by candlelight	1875	36.5 × 46.5 cm oil on panel
	Girl with jumping jack (Marie Anker)	1875	35.5 × 30 cm oil on canvas
	Country children	1876	111 × 175 cm oil on canvas	Musée d'art et d'histoire, Neuchâtel
	Still life: coffee and cognac	1877	34 × 46 cm oil on canvas	Winterthur Art Museum
	Gym lesson in Ins	1879	96 × 147.5 cm oil on canvas	Collection Christoph Blocher
	Children's breakfast	1879	65 × 81 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Basel
	Schoolboy	1881	56 × 42.5 cm oil on canvas	Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur
	Hip picture of a girl (Marie Anker)	1881	65 × 81cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Bern
	Little Red Riding Hood	1883	62 × 65 cm oil on canvas
	The working names	1883	86 × 55.5 cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	A Gotthelf reader	1884	59 × 42 cm oil on canvas
	Knitting girl	1884	65 × 46.5 cm oil on canvas
	The grandfather tells a story	1884	74 × 109 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Bern
	The pile dweller	1886	65 × 81 cm oil on canvas	Winterthur Art Museum
	The little potato peeler	1886	71 × 53 cm Oil on canvas	Privately owned
	Reading girl (Cécile Anker)	September 12, 1886	16.5 × 25 cm brush and pen in blue faience paint	Privately owned
	Girl braiding her hair	1887	70.5 × 54cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	Civil wedding	1887	76.5 × 127 cm oil on panel
	Reclining female nude	1887	17 × 45 cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	Chiusi	1887	watercolor	Privately owned
	Queen Bertha and the spinners	1888	86 × 126.5 cm oil on canvas	Museée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne
	The older sister	around 1889	66 × 46 cm, oil on canvas	Koller auction house, Zurich 2011
	The kindergarden	1890	80 × 141 cm oil on canvas	Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur
	The little knitters	1891	62 × 68.5 cm, oil on panel	Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur
	Portrait of a boy	around 1891	Oil on canvas	Collection Christoph Blocher
	Castello San Giorgio in Mantua	1891	watercolor	Privately owned
	Grandfather's devotion	1893	63 × 92 cm oil on canvas	Kunstmuseum Bern , Bernese Art Society
	Two sleeping girls on the stove bench	1895	55.5 × 71.5 cm oil on canvas	Kunsthaus Zurich
	The village school from 1848	1896	104 × 175.5 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Basel
	Still life - immoderation	1896	48 × 62 cm oil on wood	Collection Christoph Blocher
	Still life: tea and melted rolls	1896	42 × 51 cm oil on canvas
	Sleeping boy in the hay	1897	55 × 71 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Basel
	Still life: beer and radish	1898	32.5 × 52 cm oil on canvas	Kunstmuseum Bern Deposit from the Gottfried Keller Foundation
	Toddler school on the Kirchenfeldbrücke	1900	76 × 127 cm	Art Museum Bern
	Advertiser at the table	1908	33.5 × 24.5 cm watercolor
	The absinthe drinker	1908	Oil on canvas
	Self-portrait	around 1908	48 × 38 cm oil on canvas	Art Museum Bern
	The girl with the dominoes	between 1850/1900	Diameter 37 cm, oil on panel	Privately owned
	The Erbeer Mareili		35 × 25 cm watercolor	Privately owned
	Girl in front of a window niche		35 × 25 cm oil on canvas	Privately owned
	Insert boy with siblings	undated	watercolor

The largest private collector of Anker works is Christoph Blocher .

Anchor house

Anchor house

The house in which Anker was born, grew up and lived and worked after 1890 is in the middle of the village of Ins. It was built in 1803 by Albert's father, the veterinarian Rudolf Anker, in the style of Zeeland farmhouses. The house layout and furnishings largely correspond to the original condition. Anker's studio has remained almost unchanged; as well as numerous objects that Anker depicted in his pictures. The house belongs to Anker's descendants, the Brefin family, who live in and look after it. The family is supported by the Albert-Anker-Haus Ins foundation founded in 1994. House and studio can be visited.

literature

• Margarete Braun-Ronsdorf:  Anker, Albert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 298 ( digitized version ).
• Helmi Gasser : The painter Albert Anker visits Heinrich Max Imhof in Altdorf. In: Historisches Neujahrsblatt / Historischer Verein Uri , Vol. 105, 2014, pp. 121–130.
• Robert Meister (Ed.): Albert Anker and his world. Zytglogge-Verlag, Bern 1981.
• Hans A. Lüthy, Paul Müller: Albert Anker, watercolors and drawings. NZZ-Verlag, Zurich 1989.
• Sandor Kuthy and others: Albert Anker. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 1980.
• Isabelle Messerli: "... if dreams then constantly lead me to studios at night ...?" In: Albert Anker - Paths to Work. Catalog for the Albert Anker 2000 exhibition in Ins. Ins 2000. pp. 63-68.
• Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Marc Fehlmann, Matthias Frehner (eds.): Albert Anker and Paris. Exhibition catalog Kunstmuseum Bern. Bern 2003.
• Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler (Ed.): Albert Anker. Exhibition catalog Fondation Pierre Gianadda. Martigny 2003/2004 (French / German)
• Isabelle Messerli: Albert Anker: His studio - his props - his models. In: Anchor. Catalog Exposition Fondation Pierre Gianadda. Martigny 2003/2004. Pp. 65-73. (French / German)
• Isabelle Messerli: Toy inventory . Albert Anker House Ins Foundation, Bern 2007. (Unpublished)
• Isabelle Messerli: Anker as Draftsman and Watercolorist . In: Albert Anker. Exhibition in Japan: The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Koriyama City Museum of Art, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Museum Eki, Kyoto in cooperation with The Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, Switzerland. December 1, 2007 - June 22, 2008. Tokyo 2007. pp. 29-30. (Engl./Jap.)
• Isabelle Messerli: Education and Learning . In: Albert Anker. Exhibition in Japan: The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Koriyama City Museum of Art, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Museum Eki, Kyoto in cooperation with The Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, Switzerland. December 1, 2007 - June 22, 2008. Tokyo 2007. pp. 106-127. (Engl./Jap.)
• Isabelle Messerli: Play to Learn . In: Albert Anker. Exhibition in Japan: The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Koriyama City Museum of Art, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Museum Eki, Kyoto in cooperation with The Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, Switzerland. December 1, 2007–22. June 2008. Tokyo 2007. pp. 88-105. (Engl./Jap.)
• Isabelle Messerli: Queen Bertha and the spinners by Albert Anker. In: Society for Swiss Art History (Ed.): Art and Architecture in Switzerland. Issue 4, Bern 2006. pp. 58–61.
• Kunstmuseum Bern (Ed.): Catalog for the 2010 exhibition: Albert Anker - Beautiful World. (With essays by Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Matthias Frehner, Isabelle Messerli.) Stämpfli Verlag, Bern.
• Rural society and material culture with Albert Anker. Reprint of the Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte , issue no. 2, 2010. In cooperation with the Albert Anker-Haus Ins foundation and the art museum. Bern.
• Peter Meyer : To a table work about Albert Anker In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 28, Issue 11, 1941, pp. 207-310.

Web links

Commons : Albert Anker  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Albert Anker in the catalog of the Burgerbibliothek Bern
• Publications by and about Albert Anker in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Literature by and about Albert Anker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Albert Anker  in the German Digital Library
• Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler: Anker, Albert. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler: Anker, Albert. In: Sikart (status: 2018), accessed on February 23, 2018.
• Website of the Albert Anker House in Ins
• Lydia Brefin tells about the life of the painter (1886) on YouTube in the Anker House in Ins
• Website for the exhibition Albert Anker and Realism in Switzerland. March to September 2013, Museum zu Allerheiligen , Schaffhausen

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sandor Kuthy, Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler: Albert Anker, 1831-1910. Catalog of works of paintings and oil studies . Wiese Verlag and Kunstmuseum Bern , Bern 1995, ISBN 3-909164-40-4 , p. 21.
2. ↑ Bust for Albert Anker
3. ↑ winterthur tourism. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on December 5, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
4. ↑ Isabelle Messerli: "... if dreams then constantly lead me to studios at night ...?" In: Albert Anker - Paths to Work. Pp. 63-68.
5. ↑ Marc Fehlmann: Albert Anker - Dessinateur. In: Albert Anker. Exhibition catalog Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny 2003, pp. 173–227.
6. ↑ Marc Fehlmann: Albert Ankers Babylonian Captivity. His Gotthelf illustrations for the Neuchâtel publisher Frédéric Zahn. In: Peter Gasser and Jan Loop (eds.): Gotthelf. Interdisciplinary approaches to his work. Peter Lang, Bern / Frankfurt am Main 2009, pp. 77–120.
7. ^ Isabelle Messerli, In: Albert Anker - Paths to the work. Pp. 63-68.
8. ^ Website Albert-Anker-Haus. Retrieved December 5, 2019 . 
9. ^ Exhibition information from the Kunstmuseum Bern . Retrieved May 8, 2014.
10. ↑ Individual articles as PDF at BEZG-online . Retrieved May 8, 2014.